D&D General why do we have halflings and gnomes?

[Maxperson]

That's why I originally said fantasy medieval era fuedalism. You know.. the one where serfs are upgraded to overtaxed commoners.

There's no evidence that this is the case for D&D, though. Nor is there any other strong evidence of a truly feudal society. All you really have a noble titles and rough status levels.

The main purpose of the assumption are to provide the monetary and security bases for the whole questing adventurer system. These people fund the quests, grant the land, and build the dungeons.

This is fine if you want to run a game like this. Feudalism is not the default for D&D, though. Heck, even in the 1e DMG it was only one of the possible government types listed.

 

[Oofta]

Remember when the thesis of this thread was 'halflings don't have a reason to be adventurers'?

Are we even in the same solar system as the original goalposts?

Peppercorns, people. What game would be complete without a full botanical rundown of all the local produce. I neither knew nor cared where peppercorns originated until this thread--and that in and of itself is weird because I imagine Alton Brown would have told me in the 20 years I've watched him.

Who is sitting at the table just waiting to catch the DM out using their past food history knowledge?

AaaaaaHAAA! Those halflings can't have corn because they never biohacked it out of Central American grasses, nor did they figure out the lime-washing process that makes it possible for humans to extract nutrients from it! Your entire campaign world is garbage because of that? And what is with these orange carrots, you HACK? Don't you know there's no house of Orange? In fact, this whole food stall is wrong because all of these brassicas were developed by the Dutch--who have NO place on Faerun.

Check and mate. Campaign over. I win.

Yeah, there's a lot of nitpicking and assumptions going on here along with cherry picking of text from MToF. The core assumption of that book is that generations may pass for the typical halfling village between attacks. As it says "In one village, the story of the ogre that ate Farmer Keller’s billy goat is a cautionary tale that will be repeated and embellished for decades."

So the assumption is that they live in very low risk areas and that they're largely ignored because "For the most part, halflings aren’t the targets of warring nations. Their villages are of little tactical value, nor are they likely to be coveted by evil wizards or to become the object of wrath for some dark force." Well, that and just because they don't list what percentage are warriors (there is no race specific details on that) means that they can't defend themselves. Because they obviously need to make sure that the great goat tragedy that happened decades ago doesn't happen again.

That's far, far different from what people are suggesting. If a specific campaign world doesn't work that way, ignore that fluff from MToF and replace it with fluff that works. But don't say "they don't work because they aren't a militaristic race" and then ignore the rest of the text in that book.

Then somehow we got off on a tangent about pepper because apparently halflings can't survive without a steady supplement of pepper and the only valid spice is pepper or something? Halflings only live in temperate climates and it's impossible for them to live in a climate that allows it's growth?

But I have yet to hear anyone clearly say what they would want other than "halflings don't work". Which is really a non answer. Want to replace halfling lore? Okay, what do you replace it with? Anything more specific than "one that works"?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Clans don't invalidate a ruler-noble-commoner system.

The gnomish and halfling all commoner societies are anomalies. And the gnome isn't exactly stated so there might be gnome nobles and royals.

Dwarfish clans are not fuedal. They’ve been well described in various books, and the closest I’ve seen is a king who is advised by a council of clan leaders.

Also RL 10th century had a pretty wide array of governments, from Empires to merchant prince run city states to kingdoms where the people could get rid of the king by vote any time they liked to several different small democracies that still argue over who counts as the longest running democratic state.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's why I originally said fantasy medieval era fuedalism. You know.. the one where serfs are upgraded to overtaxed commoners.

The main purpose of the assumption are to provide the monetary and security bases for the whole questing adventurer system. These people fund the quests, grant the land, and build the dungeons.

What? No!
The town mayor pays the adventurers more often than some viscount or whatever, IME, or the town pools it’s money.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

54 pages and nobody's mentioned the halfling country of Luiren? Or the jungle nomad Ghostwise halflings in the Chondalwood? Or the Hin Ghostwars that split apart the halfling peoples (Ghostwise fleeing to the Chondalwood and resuming their nomadic lifestyle there, Stronghearts building permanent settlements in the Lluirwood and eventually establishing Luiren, Lightfoots scattering across Faerun and assimilating into other nations)?

Never mind other settings, people keep talking about FR halflings like they're oblivious idyllic shire villagers, when... they're not actually. At least not all of them.

 

[tetrasodium]

The post I made was originally a reply to a line you mentioned, but my phone can't handle very long quotes (like this one) and has a hard time putting what I say in the correct place. In that particular exame, by the time I finished deleting everything you wrote other than the pertinent lines the text editor had made everything I typed show up as your quote. The easiest remedy was to remove the quote entirely, which is still hard to do on a phone but possible.

And, as a reply to what is quoted here.....you are equating my campaign assuming halflings just grow their own spices as equivalent to me putting a cactus in an arctic setting. If you think those two things are the same, I'm not sure what to tell you other than I don't agree.

Also, I have never said halflings hide in the back alleys of the world never trading and remaining aloof of everyone. That's not my argument and not my position to pivot from.

My view is that halflings just settle in peaceful areas of the world, are good neighbors, defend themselves from raids/wild animals/monsters, and team up with other good guy powers when something more dangerous comes along.

"my campaign assuming halflings grow their own spices" is a reasonable level of abstraction for one's suspension of disbelief to swallow, but that's not how halflings grow pepper & harvest silk came up. It came up because halflings morphed into some kind of happy go lucky hobbit who liked a generous meal that is also an ascetic monk shunning spices like salt& pepper who does and does not engage in trade while living far from roads and randomly traversing through the forest on foot without a cart or wagon in nonrepeating random routes to avoid forming trails a bandit ranger could find as if those halflings were in serious fear of death squads or adventurers looking to carve them up for luck glands over the idea that the d&d world would be at least as dangerous as our world was at a similar point in development. We past the point of reasonable abstraction long before pepper even came up when there was an attempt to dismiss two posters who raised two different points in good faith discussion by painting a picture that made Anne Frank sound downright reckless living in an attic. It's a bit late to point at where pepper grows suddenly being a line too far in that trail of dismissal while ignoring the unknowable alien world of starfish aliens being drawn.

@PsyzhranV2 eberron & darksun style halflings have come up a few times, usually in respect to how the whole problem would have been avoided were the phb not so setting exclusive because they are so different & the shire halflings could be shrugged off by pointing at them.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Third, if you are going to argue realism to this degree, why are you not arguing for Tritons, who you argued survive the great pressures of the deep oceans, to die in the low pressures at the surface?

Replace "tritons" with "blobfish" and you have your answer. Sudden changes of pressure from high -> low are just as dangerous as low -> high.

 

[Minigiant]

What? No!
The town mayor pays the adventurers more often than some viscount or whatever, IME, or the town pools it’s money.

The town land is granted by a noble.
You do the quest for the mayor and he sets you up with a meeting with the lord.

You complete some quests for the lord and they set you up with meetings with the next guy up. And so on, until you get a royal audience.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Which page of the DMG is that on?

 

[Maxperson]

Replace "tritons" with "blobfish" and you have your answer. Sudden changes of pressure from high -> low are just as dangerous as low -> high.

Triton's have a skeleton, which would kill it in the depths. They also have lungs(sacks of air). You can't use the blobfish to explain Triton survival.